The Unforgotten

Aleksandar Hemon’s fictional lives.

The Bosnian-born Hemon is a postmodernist who has been mugged by history.

Photograph by Milomir KovaČeviĆ StraŠni

In Joseph Roth’s novel of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, “The Radetzky March,” there is an extraordinary scene in which the varied soldiers of that vast, improbable portmanteau parade in Vienna before the Hapsburg emperor, Franz Joseph. Uniformed men stream by, Austrians, Italians, Hungarians, Slovenians, and—most remarkably and most exotically—Bosnians, vivid in their “blood-red fezzes,” which seemed

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